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In The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell explains that black crime today is just like the old Italian Mafia:

… The moral of the “Godfather” movies was that the Corleone family, conceived in crime, could never escape it. “Just when I thought I was out,” Michael Corleone says, “they pull me back in.” The moral of “A Family Business” was the opposite: that for the Lupollos and the Tuccis and the Salemis and the Alcamos—and, by extension, many other families just like them—crime was the means by which a group of immigrants could transcend their humble origins. It was, as the sociologist James O’Kane put it, the “crooked ladder” of social mobility. …

The big difference, according to Malcolm, between the good old days of the Mafia and black crime is that there has been too much law enforcement since 1960, which is what is keeping black criminals from becoming the patriarchs of upper middle class families:

When read alongside Ianni, what is striking about Goffman’s book is not the cultural difference between being an Italian thug in the early part of the twentieth century and being an African-American thug today. It’s the role of law enforcement in each era. Chuck’s high-school education ended prematurely after he was convicted of aggravated assault in a schoolyard fight. Another boy called Chuck’s mother a crack whore, and he pushed his antagonist’s face into the snow. In a previous generation, this dispute would not have ended up in the legal system. Until the nineteen-seventies, outstanding warrants in the city of Philadelphia were handled by a two-man team, who would sit in an office during the evening hours and make telephone calls to the homes of people on their list. Anyone stopped by the police could show a fake I.D. Today, there are computers and sometimes even fingerprint machines in squad cars. Between 1960 and 2000, the ratio of police officers to Philadelphia residents rose by almost seventy per cent.

Lack of law enforcement is what turned the overwhelmingly criminal masses of Italian-Americans into middle class people:

That’s why the crooked ladder worked as well as it did. The granddaughter could end up riding horses because the law—whether from indifference, incompetence, or corruption—left her gangster grandfather alone.

Seriously …

First, the Italian Mafia was a major blight on the American Northeast. If you wonder why cities like New York and Philadelphia fell so far by 1975, and some have never recovered, one reason (among several) is the toll exacted by Mafia leeches. In the 1970s, for instance, a distinct advantage that the Los Angeles economy had over the New York economy was the Mafia rakeoff was much smaller in LA.

The only good thing about the Mafia in America was that it made up a much smaller percentage of the population than the Mafia in Sicily, which is still a mess.

Second, I don’t have hard evidence for this, but I strongly doubt that most descendants of the Mafia are respectable upper middle class professionals today. The Mafia did not attract the hard-working and intelligent, it attracted lazy guys who liked to play cards all day. Their grandsons are probably hanging out at the Jersey Shore today, not studying art history in a summer program in Florence.

For example, was Francis Ford Coppola, director of the Godfather movies, descended from thugs? No, his father was a symphony musician who composed orchestral scores in the style of Ludwig van Beethoven. And his mother’s father had been Caruso’s pianist.

I’ve known a lot of educated Italian-Americans over the years. How many had mob ties? I can think of one Notre Dame high school friend whose father was a prominent sports bookie; and two friends from the St. Francis de Sales Boy Scouts who lost $400 each in high school betting on sports with a bookie who had some some muscle connections. They had to crawl to their lawyer dads for the cash to keep from having their legs broken.

But that’s about it. Almost all the educated Italian-Americans I’ve known, like my wife’s uncle the Air Force colonel with the Ph.D. in metallurgy, loved Coppola and Scorsese movies. They would have enjoyed boasting of some distant relative with connections to the underworld, but, to their frustration, they’d draw a complete blank when I’d ask them.

Third, the number of Mafia members as a percentage of Italian-Americans was strikingly smaller than the percentage of African-Americans who have been involved in crime. The Mafia was a formalized institution with barriers to entry. It’s like the percentage of Italian-Americans who have been priests is a lot smaller than the percentage of African-Americans who have tried their hand at preaching.

Fourth, Italian-Americans had low rates of disorganized crime. That is not true for blacks.

Fifth, black crime rates skyrocketed when law enforcement was dialed down in the 1960s.

Sixth, blacks have been committing crimes for a long time without the racial ratio changing much. We actually have homicide statistics by race in Philadelphia going all the way back to the 1830s. James Q. Wilson wrote in 2002:

A central problem—perhaps the central problem—in improving the relationship between white and black Americans is the difference in racial crime rates. No matter how innocent or guilty a stranger may be, he carries with him in public the burdens or benefits of his group identity…

Estimating the crime rates of racial groups is, of course, difficult because we only know the arrest rate. If police are more (or less) likely to arrest a criminal of a given race, the arrest rate will overstate (or understate) the true crime rate. To examine this problem, researchers have compared the rate at which criminal victims report (in the National Crime Victimization Survey, or NCVS) the racial identity of whoever robbed or assaulted them with the rate at which the police arrest robbers or assaulters of different races.

Regardless of whether the victim is black or white, there are no significant differences between victim reports and police arrests. This suggests that, though racism may exist in policing (as in all other aspects of American life), racism cannot explain the overall black arrest rate. The arrest rate, thus, is a reasonably good proxy for the crime rate.

Black men commit murders at a rate about eight times greater than that for white men. This disparity is not new; it has existed for well over a century.

When historian Roger Lane studied murder rates in Philadelphia, he found that since 1839 the black rate has been much higher than the white rate.

This gap existed long before the invention of television, the wide distribution of hand guns, or access to dangerous drugs (except for alcohol).

America is a violent nation. The estimated homicide rate in this country, excluding all those committed by blacks, is over three times higher than the homicide rate for the other six major industrial nations. But whatever causes white Americans to kill other people, it causes black Americans to kill others at a much higher rate.

Of course the average African American male is not likely to kill anybody.
During the 1980s and early 1990s, fewer than one out of every 2,000 black men would kill a person in any year, and most of their victims were other blacks.

Though for young black men homicide is the leading cause of death, the chances of the average white person’s being killed by a black are very small. But the chances of being hit by lightning are also very small, and yet we leave high ground during a thunderstorm. However low the absolute risk, the relative risk—relative, that is, to the chances of being killed by a white—is high, and this fact changes everything.

When whites walk down the street, they are more nervous when they encounter a black man than when they encounter a white one. When blacks walk down the street, they are more likely than whites to be stopped and questioned by a police officer…

The differences in the racial rates for property crimes, though smaller than those for violent offenses, are still substantial. The estimated rate at which black men commit burglary is three times higher than it is for white men; for rape, it is five times higher.

The difference between blacks and whites with respect to crime, and especially violent crime, has, I think, done more to impede racial amity than any other factor.

rationalizing black dysfunction is a great hobby on the left, especially the black left. I know lots of influential white liberals, and what they tell me in private is most amusing, especially their belief that many blacks need to be wards of the state because they are basically irresponsible.

“When whites walk down the street, they are more nervous when they encounter a black man than when they encounter a white one.” I suspect that blacks are also more nervous of other blacks than they are of whites.

Some years ago, Jesse Jackson ruefully said that if he were walking alone down a dark street, and heard footsteps behind him, he would be terrified to see a group of young blacks, and relieved to see a bunch of young white men. Probably one of the few honest things the Rev. ever said.

“I went to do a film in a penitentiary, and I was up there six weeks. Arizona state penitentiary. It was something. It was strange because it something like 80% black people. And what’s strange about that is that there are no black people in Arizona. I’m not lying, they bus mother fuckers in.

And I was up there, and I looked at all the brothers and it made my heart ache. All these beautiful black men in the joint, warriors that should be out there helping the masses. And I was real naive right, and six weeks later, I was thinking ‘Thank God we got penitentiaries.’”

For example, was Francis Ford Coppola, director of the Godfather movies, descended from thugs? No, his father was a symphony musician who composed orchestral scores in the style of Ludwig van Beethoven. And his mother’s father had been Caruso’s pianist.

I’ve known a lot of educated Italian-Americans over the years. How many had mob ties? I can think of one Notre Dame high school friend whose father was a prominent sports bookie; and two friends from the St. Francis de Sales Boy Scouts who lost $400 each in high school betting on sports with a bookie who had some some muscle connections. They had to crawl to their lawyer dads for the cash to keep from having their legs broken.

But that’s about it. Almost all the educated Italian-Americans I’ve known, like my wife’s uncle the Air Force colonel with the Ph.D. in metallurgy, loved Coppola and Scorsese movies. They would have enjoyed boasting of some distant relative with connections to the underworld, but, to their frustration, they’d draw a complete blank when I’d ask them.

It would seem Gregory Clark’s work would come to bear here, no?

I’ve said this:

Gregory Clark's last book is FAR more significant than Nicholas Wade's, yet not recognized for the game-changer it is http://t.co/D7Vx6w80sY

This “analysis” doesn’t work as Sailer noted because the descendents of Mafia members are not among the upper-middle of class of Italians Classic example is (and there are dozens like this) Al Persico who started college at St. Johns University (supposedly a promising student) before dropping out to “work” with his old man Carmine “the Snake” Persico, who took over as boss of the NY Colombo Family in the 70s. According to Wiki, Al has a brother who’s a high school math teacher, respectable to be sure, but hardly upper-middle. Really, the Sopranos TV show captured it better than anything else in showing that all of the Mafia guys had fathers, uncles, cousins who had also been or were in the mob. Mob activity for Italians ran through generations.

Jews are the much better ethnic group to support upper mobility stemming from criminal activity. Jews dominated organized crime for much of the 20s through the 50s (made the Italians look like wimps and knuckle-draggers) but you rarely saw it as multi-generational I bet if you ask a typical Jewish doctor or lawyer today about his immigrant ancestors quite a few could tell you about colorful characters in their family tree.

Gladwell must have gotten such a kick out of having his “10,000-hour rule” thoroughly demolished in the media that he’s decided to toss out more absurd notions in order to see if he can get the same reaction. He’s experiencing Ta Nehisi Coates envy.

The decline of northeastern cities in the 70s had mainly to do with black crime i.e. disorganized crime.

There’s a major qualitative difference between ethnic mafias and black crime. The former is organized and tries to minimize collateral damage on “civilians” and basic social dysfunction since it’s bad for business. The latter is never organized and revolves around common street violence.

Thanks Steve, you saved me some money. I just read this article and was about to throw my computer at the wall before reading your timely commentary.

Malcolm Gladwell wants us to... what? Lower police enforcement so black criminals can finally get the prosperity they deserve?

This guy has made how much money from his books?

rationalizing black dysfunction is a great hobby on the left, especially the black left. I know lots of influential white liberals, and what they tell me in private is most amusing, especially their belief that many blacks need to be wards of the state because they are basically irresponsible.

Gladwel outgladelled this years ago in an emaill exchange column with Bill Simmons where he pontificated on the possible number of black poets, scientists and geniuses untapped in jail.

Yup, that was pretty awesome:

America has one of the highest incarceration rates in recorded history, for example. (We have six times more people behind bars, on a per capita basis, than Europe does.) That works out to about 2 million people—the majority of whom are young men, and a disproportionate share of those young men are young black men. Surely there must be hundreds—if not thousands—of potential professional athletes in that number, not to mention scientists or entrepreneurs or poets.

I just read a book called the Chitlin Circuit, and details how every bronzetown on the R&B circuit had its “stroll” with lots of drug dealing, stabbings, beatdowns, all just normal and taken for granted. There were a few entrepreneurs who capitalized on it with numbers games, juke joints, cathouses and the like. Periodically the white governments would go on a moral cleanup campaign but the places usually bounced back. Well except Beale St in Memphis, which was pretty much razed.

One thing the black hustlers didn’t seem to have is the organized enforcement of the Mafia. It was just all hit and miss. The circuit did produce 10 years of very crude and obscure (to whites) dance music prior to 1955, when all hell broke loose.

There’s a major qualitative difference between ethnic mafias and black crime. The former is organized and tries to minimize collateral damage on “civilians” and basic social dysfunction since it’s bad for business. The latter is never organized and revolves around common street violence.

Ethnic mafias are also extremely conservative. They oppose immigration except by the chosen people, for fear of competition. They take advantage of all sorts of business opportunities for easy credit, gambling, alcohol/drugs, pornography, prostitution, abortion – opportunities created by WASP prohibitionists.

As Steve pointed out, there are tons of problems with this article. Here’s one of Gladwell’s choicer assertions:

“All three of the great waves of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century European immigrants to America innovated. Irish gangsters dominated organized crime in the urban Northeast in the mid to late nineteenth century, followed by the Jewish gangsters—Meyer Lansky, Arnold Rothstein, and Dutch Schultz, among others. Then it was the Italians’ turn. They were among the poorest and the least skilled of the immigrants of that era. Crime was one of the few options available for advancement. The point of the crooked-ladder argument and “A Family Business” was that criminal activity, under those circumstances, was not rebellion; it wasn’t a rejection of legitimate society. It was an attempt to join in.”

Note the attempt at chronology: first the Irish, then the Jews, and finally the Italians. A case can be made for placing the Irish first (their mass arrival, after all, started in the first half of the 19th century), but the Jews and Italians began immigrating to the USA at basically the same time (the late 19th century). For that matter, the big Jewish gangs reached their peak during the period 1920-1950, the same period that saw the rise of the major Italian gangs. Hence, the Italians did not take over after the Jews left; they built their criminal organizations at the same time.

You know, what with WIKIPEDIA and all, you would think that Gladwell would have just looked up some famous Jewish gangsters (Mickey Cohen, Myer Lansky, Louis Lepke Buchalter, Bugsy Siegel, etc.) and made a timeline….

1. Italy existed, just not as a political unit.
2. The House of Savoy conquered the whole peninsula bar the Patrimony of St. Peter in 1859-61.
3. Italian mass immigration to the United States post-dated that.
4. The first mafia family known to have been founded in this country appeared in New Orleans in 1869.
5. "Sicilian" in common parlance among Italians can mean anyone from Southern Italy.

What is it with Malcolm Gladwell? On the one hand he’s upset that the cops incarcerate too many blacks so that ordinary folks make a cause and connection that “Black male equals criminal”, on the other hand he’s also upset that those in jail are the future poets, scientists, and all around productive members of society. So in other words, just leave more of them out on the streets so that they can naturally reach and discover their full potential. After all, the next black Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are right around the corner. Wonder if one could ever ask him, “Uh, say, Malcolm, how many D’sharenequiouses and Detrelle Tyrone Johnsons do you personally encounter every day?”

“Fourth, Italian-Americans had low rates of disorganized crime. That is not true for blacks.”

Organization came from the family since for those kinds of Paisanos it was literally the “family” business.

For this particular type of crime to be organized, it must be inherently family based since blood is the best kind of loyalty. But since the out of wedlock rate for blacks currently stands around 75%, (with indications that it will in fact hit around 90% by the yr. 2029) there is no blood line of which to trust and base a loyal organization on. What’s left is pure terror; namely, the top dog (or violent killer) wins the match and gets to be the boss or until he’s overthrown by lieutenants.

Fact is, the out of wedlock of Italian-Americans was never (and still isn’t for that matter) that high to begin with and certainly nothing in comparison to blacks.

And there’s the rub. What kind of “family” business can disorganized crime build up when they tend not to know who their fathers are or from where their various siblings and near relatives came? Are they related in some vague way? Possibly but just as possibly not.

Dr. Thomas Sowell posited yrs. ago that blacks in various ghettos would tend to name their children various exotic sounding names so that they could recognize a family member.

“When whites walk down the street, they are more nervous when they encounter a black man than when they encounter a white one.” I suspect that blacks are also more nervous of other blacks than they are of whites.”

Gladwell is being dense. But there is a general point here. There isn’t a single ethnic group that hasn’t become rich through some form of theft or cheating. Possibly the cleanest wealth belongs to the Japanese, even considering their early 20th C. But, don’t hold me to that.

"Gladwell is being dense. But there is a general point here. There isn’t a single ethnic group that hasn’t become rich through some form of theft or cheating. Possibly the cleanest wealth belongs to the Japanese, even considering their early 20th C. But, don’t hold me to that."

I'm sorry, but that is a ludicrous assertion. To find a fairly group of people with a relatively clean record, you would need to look to history's losers.

Gladwell is being dense. But there is a general point here. There isn’t a single ethnic group that hasn’t become rich through some form of theft or cheating. Possibly the cleanest wealth belongs to the Japanese, even considering their early 20th C. But, don’t hold me to that.

Stupid Marxist nonsense. Wealth is occasionally obtained by cheating, but usually it's made by making others better off.

The 1942-45 experience melted down most of the Japanese 'wealth' accumulated, and Japanese Americans are not well known for producing very wealthy people, although they do have quite a solid upper middle class.

Then it was the Italians’ turn. They were among the poorest and the least skilled of the immigrants of that era. Crime was one of the few options available for advancement. The point of the crooked-ladder argument and “A Family Business” was that criminal activity, under those circumstances, was not rebellion; it wasn’t a rejection of legitimate society. It was an attempt to join in.

That reminds me of the early years Quebec separatism and nationalism. The old Anglo elite in Montreal and Quebec City was notoriously racist, corrupt, and monopolistic. And they lacked any business sense, or ability to compete in a fair and free market. It was these Anglos that made an imprint on the French community leaders of that era. The French community organizers saw all English-speaking people in those terms, and acted (and reacted) appropriately. In other words – paranoia, kleptomania, ignorance of economics and business practice – all learned from their old enemies.

Gladwell is being dense. But there is a general point here. There isn't a single ethnic group that hasn't become rich through some form of theft or cheating. Possibly the cleanest wealth belongs to the Japanese, even considering their early 20th C. But, don't hold me to that.

“Gladwell is being dense. But there is a general point here. There isn’t a single ethnic group that hasn’t become rich through some form of theft or cheating. Possibly the cleanest wealth belongs to the Japanese, even considering their early 20th C. But, don’t hold me to that.”

I’m sorry, but that is a ludicrous assertion. To find a fairly group of people with a relatively clean record, you would need to look to history’s losers.

Steve is spot on about barriers to entry. In one sense, black gangs have almost none. It’s a kind of concentric circle, major league-farm team thing. The Chicago gangs have a fairly organized structure for its inner core of Chi and regional leaders, though they turn on each other periodically. There’s all the initiations, multi-generational ties, and pseudo masonic/street hustler moorish science hoodoo bullshit, too. Having Chicago ties, I’m sure Steve is familiar with what I’m talking about.
From there, you have basic cliques that that distribute drugs, mostly. They’re initiated in, usually by the time they’re 12 or so, but leaving isn’t that big a deal, usually the “jumping out” beating ritual. Then there’s the outer circles of prospects, wanabees, and probationary groups.
The main thing is that whole neighborhoods and even towns of black youths wind up with some level of affiliation, often through coercion. The phenomena of race-based prison gang chapters only reinforces this. Black gangs in general have a strategy of large numbers, though Vice Lords-affiliated groups tend to have some measure of selectivity compared to other groups.

"Gladwell is being dense. But there is a general point here. There isn’t a single ethnic group that hasn’t become rich through some form of theft or cheating. Possibly the cleanest wealth belongs to the Japanese, even considering their early 20th C. But, don’t hold me to that."

I'm sorry, but that is a ludicrous assertion. To find a fairly group of people with a relatively clean record, you would need to look to history's losers.

No, that doesn’t prove anything. It just means that they lost out to the winners. Now if they’d have only gone to Harvard….perhaps they’d have won.

Black crime is literally the opposite of what the Mafia stood for. Like Vito Corleone, the Commission in New York never formally allowed drug dealing, which is why the Bonannos and later the Columbos were kicked out of it. The safest streets in New York City, even during the 80s, were always the ones Mafioso set up shop on, and that’s not a legend; anyone from an Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn will attest to it.

"Gladwell is being dense. But there is a general point here. There isn’t a single ethnic group that hasn’t become rich through some form of theft or cheating. Possibly the cleanest wealth belongs to the Japanese, even considering their early 20th C. But, don’t hold me to that."

I'm sorry, but that is a ludicrous assertion. To find a fairly group of people with a relatively clean record, you would need to look to history's losers.

I think you’ve just proven my point. The way to disprove it is to name me such a group of people.
Maybe, the Saudis? If you don’t consider a windfall cheating.

Chuck and Mike were criminals: they were complicit in the barbarism of the drug trade. But, in the Mertonian sense, they were also innovators. Goffman describes how they craved success in mainstream society. They tried to get an education and legitimate jobs, only to find themselves thwarted. Selling crack was a business they entered into only because they believed that all other doors were closed to them.

This “all other doors were closed to them” routine is old-fashioned liberal BS.

Sudhir Venkatesh’s “Gang Leader For A Day” profiles the operation of a Chicago gang in the early 1990s. Venkatesh writes of the gang’s leader, “After college he took a job selling office supplies and industrial textiles at a midsize corporation in downtown Chicago. But he felt his chances of success were limited because he was black; he got angry when he saw white people with lesser skills get promoted ahead of him. Within two years he left the mainstream to return to the projects and the gang life.”

Sounds like he suffered from the condition Whiskey identified as “toxic levels of self-esteem mixed with manifest incompetence.” Obviously crime suited him better than respectable work, as it does many in the black community.

Good point: The Mafia had the power to control its members, and to punish / expel any loose cannons. Not so modern black gangsters. Even motorcycle gangs were more disciplined.

My parents and older friends also remember Italian immigrants at their schools. The kids from Mafia families were the nice guys, and very often nerds. They often wore suits and bow-ties when everyone else would wear jeans. But nobody ever bullied them or dissed them. Teachers all gave them good marks. And despite being nerds … they were about the only nerds I knew who weren’t smart or overachievers. Or maybe they were. The junior Mafiosi were never involved in school activities, sports, or clubs. When they went home, their parents taught them Mafia Science 1o1.

The other major group of Italian immigrants were the wannabe-Mafiosi. These guys weren’t from the right families and could never be, but they made a big thing about being gangsters complete with switchblades and leather jackets. Anyone with half an eye could tell who was Cosa Nostra and who wasn’t, even though actual membership was a top secret. And those leather-jacketed thugs from auto shop were terrified of the real Mafia kids.

The kids from Mafia families were the nice guys, and very often nerds.

Interesting. I think the number of made guys was estimated by federal law enforcement in 1987 to be about 1,700, with about half in New York City. Let's posit 'associates' outnumber 'members' 4 to 1. That's 8,500 households, who had, you'd figure 35,000 children of whom perhaps 30% would be school-age at any one time. That would mean 10,000 children, or fewer than one per school district in this country.

The other major group of Italian immigrants were the wannabe-Mafiosi. These guys weren’t from the right families and could never be...

In the 1990 film "Goodfellas," Ray Liotta's character (Henry Hill) and Robert DeNiro's character (Jimmy Conway) couldn't be "made men" because their mothers weren't full-blooded Italians. Hill and Conway could only be "associates" to real mafia members. Hill said it was "real greaseball stuff."

"Corruption is subjective. It depends on what moral beliefs you hold. From the Saudis’ perspective, the US is more corrupt."

I'm sure that they would, dear fellow. For that matter, there are scores of Black academics who will tell you that, seeing as how racism is the most corrupt thing on the planet, Whites are more corrupt than Blacks.We all have our standards.

Gladwell is being dense. But there is a general point here. There isn't a single ethnic group that hasn't become rich through some form of theft or cheating. Possibly the cleanest wealth belongs to the Japanese, even considering their early 20th C. But, don't hold me to that.

Gladwell is being dense. But there is a general point here. There isn’t a single ethnic group that hasn’t become rich through some form of theft or cheating. Possibly the cleanest wealth belongs to the Japanese, even considering their early 20th C. But, don’t hold me to that.

Stupid Marxist nonsense. Wealth is occasionally obtained by cheating, but usually it’s made by making others better off.

As Steve pointed out, there are tons of problems with this article. Here's one of Gladwell's choicer assertions:

"All three of the great waves of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century European immigrants to America innovated. Irish gangsters dominated organized crime in the urban Northeast in the mid to late nineteenth century, followed by the Jewish gangsters—Meyer Lansky, Arnold Rothstein, and Dutch Schultz, among others. Then it was the Italians’ turn. They were among the poorest and the least skilled of the immigrants of that era. Crime was one of the few options available for advancement. The point of the crooked-ladder argument and “A Family Business” was that criminal activity, under those circumstances, was not rebellion; it wasn’t a rejection of legitimate society. It was an attempt to join in."

Note the attempt at chronology: first the Irish, then the Jews, and finally the Italians. A case can be made for placing the Irish first (their mass arrival, after all, started in the first half of the 19th century), but the Jews and Italians began immigrating to the USA at basically the same time (the late 19th century). For that matter, the big Jewish gangs reached their peak during the period 1920-1950, the same period that saw the rise of the major Italian gangs. Hence, the Italians did not take over after the Jews left; they built their criminal organizations at the same time.

You know, what with WIKIPEDIA and all, you would think that Gladwell would have just looked up some famous Jewish gangsters (Mickey Cohen, Myer Lansky, Louis Lepke Buchalter, Bugsy Siegel, etc.) and made a timeline....

"Dutch Schultz (born Arthur Flegenheimer; August 6, 1901 – October 24, 1935) was a New York City-area German-Jewish American mobster of the 1920s and 1930s who made his fortune in organized crime-related activities, including bootlegging alcohol and the numbers racket. Weakened by two tax evasion trials led by prosecutor Thomas Dewey, Schultz's rackets were also threatened by fellow mobster Lucky Luciano. In an attempt to avert his conviction, Schultz asked the Commission for permission to kill Dewey, which they refused. When Schultz disobeyed them and attempted to kill him anyway, the Commission ordered his murder in 1935.[1]

Arthur Simon Flegenheimer was born to German Jewish immigrants Herman and Emma Flegenheimer.[1] When Dutch was 15 years old, his father abandoned his family. The event traumatized Schultz, and he always denied his father had left them.[2] Following his father's departure, Dutch left school to support himself and his mother. From 1916 to 1919, he worked as a feeder and pressman for the Clark Loose Leaf Company, Caxton Press, American Express, and Schultz Trucking in the Bronx.[3] He then worked at a neighborhood night club owned by a minor mobster, and began robbing craps games before turning to burglary. Schultz was caught breaking into an apartment and sent to the prison on Blackwell's Island (now known as Roosevelt Island). A photograph of Schultz at age 18, during his incarceration, was published in the 2010 book "New York City Gangland."[3]"

First, the Italian Mafia was a major blight on the American Northeast. If you wonder why cities like New York and Philadelphia fell so far by 1975, and some have never recovered, one reason (among several) is the toll exacted by Mafia leeches. In the 1970s, for instance, a distinct advantage that the Los Angeles economy had over the New York economy was the Mafia rakeoff was much smaller in LA.

It’s not as bad as Naples, where the Mafia controls the waste management and has literally been trashing the city:

Keep in mind that "Italy" has only existed since 1870. I assume that the Mafia comes largely from Sicily. Other Italian-Americans may have come from elsewhere.

1. Italy existed, just not as a political unit.
2. The House of Savoy conquered the whole peninsula bar the Patrimony of St. Peter in 1859-61.
3. Italian mass immigration to the United States post-dated that.
4. The first mafia family known to have been founded in this country appeared in New Orleans in 1869.
5. “Sicilian” in common parlance among Italians can mean anyone from Southern Italy.

Good point: The Mafia had the power to control its members, and to punish / expel any loose cannons. Not so modern black gangsters. Even motorcycle gangs were more disciplined.

My parents and older friends also remember Italian immigrants at their schools. The kids from Mafia families were the nice guys, and very often nerds. They often wore suits and bow-ties when everyone else would wear jeans. But nobody ever bullied them or dissed them. Teachers all gave them good marks. And despite being nerds ... they were about the only nerds I knew who weren't smart or overachievers. Or maybe they were. The junior Mafiosi were never involved in school activities, sports, or clubs. When they went home, their parents taught them Mafia Science 1o1.

The other major group of Italian immigrants were the wannabe-Mafiosi. These guys weren't from the right families and could never be, but they made a big thing about being gangsters complete with switchblades and leather jackets. Anyone with half an eye could tell who was Cosa Nostra and who wasn't, even though actual membership was a top secret. And those leather-jacketed thugs from auto shop were terrified of the real Mafia kids.

The kids from Mafia families were the nice guys, and very often nerds.

Interesting. I think the number of made guys was estimated by federal law enforcement in 1987 to be about 1,700, with about half in New York City. Let’s posit ‘associates’ outnumber ‘members’ 4 to 1. That’s 8,500 households, who had, you’d figure 35,000 children of whom perhaps 30% would be school-age at any one time. That would mean 10,000 children, or fewer than one per school district in this country.

Sounds like he suffered from the condition Whiskey identified as “toxic levels of self-esteem mixed with manifest incompetence.” Obviously crime suited him better than respectable work, as it does many in the black community.

The story sounds like an urban legend. Still, why would you assume he was an incompetent salesman, much less a ‘manifest’ one?

One major reason for the lack of multigenerational black crime families is that gangsters tend to die young. Even if they last a while in the thug life, gangsters aren’t the type to maintain meaningful connections with the children they father. I would also imagine that the more family-oriented, long-lived gangsters tend to get out of the life after a while and go straight.

Italian-American gangsters are legitimately family oriented and usually have normal life expectancies. They also have a tough time leaving the life because it’s seen as disloyalty to the family.

The descendants of these mafioso are generally not high achievers. Most of them are useless guidos who accomplish little in life and act like low class thugs. Their culture is a hybrid of Italian, east coat, and hip hop. Definitely Jersey Shore types. Anyone who’s ever been to the east coast is well aware how obnoxious and belligerent Italians can be, but for all their flaws at least their neighborhoods are safe. You won’t get shot on the South shore of Staten Island, but the rudeness and in-your-face hostility can get annoying.

Remember this guy is the same person who thought “eigenvalue” was spelled “Igon Value” despite his British born father being a professor of mathematics and engineering at one of Canada’s top universities. You would think a parent with doctorate in mathematics might be consulted when discussing mathematical terminology, but then you weren’t earning 40K dollars per speech on the lecture circuit and you were not Malcolm Gladwell.

“I’m sorry, but that is a ludicrous assertion. To find a fairly group of people with a relatively clean record, you would need to look to history’s losers.”

Not true. Look at Iceland, and Scandinavia in general.

Even in the colony age, they had hardly any colonies, all of small size, and they were the first to give them up, in large part because all the Scandinavian colonies were so unprofitable. Last time these guys were being real assholes was back in the Viking age.

Nowadays, they’re known for not being assholes, and for quiet prosperity and rationalism. They’ve been known for this for a century +. That, and for being brain-washable lefty suckers, of course.

Its true that getting arrested today is more detrimental than it was before… Getting job with a felony or misdemeanors is difficult.. And a lot of that crime is petty stuff the years ago would be forgiven or not even gone through the system.

It isn’t hard to get the names and details of the crimes from Newspaper reports. The near north side had a lot of homicides that were connected with Cabrini Green.

But, among white victims — maybe 1/2 were family arguments, infant deaths (beating and abuse by family), a few associated with prostitution and murder suicides. There was one arson that killed 4 whites. Committed by a mentally ill woman who was trying to start a fire to keep warm — lighting it with dollar bills. I could not make that up. (I am excluding Hispanic from White).

And in the best neighborhoods, there aren’t that many murders, and a surprisingly large number of those were blacks killing blacks. In white neighborhoods, Blacks still manage to kill mostly other Blacks — even upwardly mobile or middle class blacks.

So, if you are white and don’t get killed by a family member or boyfriend/girlfriend — there simply not many murders. Like counting on one hand the murders over 12 years in neighborhoods with low numbers of homicides. These are neighborhoods with a few dots representing 10 murders.

What it means is that the Times used neighborhood as a proxy for race. But using race itself instead of location is a stronger predictor. Yes, if a family member kills another family member or lover — it is murder, but it isn’t what people think of as part of the murder rate. Where I live, ‘gun nuts’ are not uncommon, but they don’t kill people. I’m talking about people with small arsenals.

"When whites walk down the street, they are more nervous when they encounter a black man than when they encounter a white one." I suspect that blacks are also more nervous of other blacks than they are of whites.

Just ask the blackest of black voices, Rev Jackson himself. He felt much more at ease finding out that someone walking behind him at night was white than black.

"When whites walk down the street, they are more nervous when they encounter a black man than when they encounter a white one." I suspect that blacks are also more nervous of other blacks than they are of whites.

Some years ago, Jesse Jackson ruefully said that if he were walking alone down a dark street, and heard footsteps behind him, he would be terrified to see a group of young blacks, and relieved to see a bunch of young white men. Probably one of the few honest things the Rev. ever said.

Its true that getting arrested today is more detrimental than it was before... Getting job with a felony or misdemeanors is difficult.. And a lot of that crime is petty stuff the years ago would be forgiven or not even gone through the system.

Its true that getting arrested today is more detrimental than it was before

I’ve tried to calculate what are the chances that the average black man on the street is a felon, commmited a felony, or been in jail.

It comes down to something like fifty percent.

Chances of the same ethnic Italian American in the 1970s? Chances of being in the mafia? chances of having relatives in the Mafia.

I have no doubt that the discrimination against Italians prior the the Godfather movies was high — even in the 1980s we assumed every Italian with any money was mobbed up.

Three big differences:

1. Starting in the 1980s, Italy became cool. Or we became aware of it being cool. Hard to make fun of Italians when you’re buying zegna suits.

2. There was a big divergence in the perception of italian mob crimes and the reality. Eventually the reality won, but it took a long time. I don’t think people today see an Italian name and think of mobsters if they drive a Benz.

3. A huge and massive crackdown on the mob removed most of the reality of Italian crime.

Differences with black crime:

1) you can push black males as the ultimate alphas, but mostly they are reverting to roles they have always been good at — athletics, singing and dancing. They make sweet music.

2) The reality of black crime is much much larger. I agree that if I see a black doctor I don’t think he is dealing crack on the side. But that is the talented tenth, everyone else may be. Opposite of the Italian situation. Lack of a family structure is a key difference.

3) Despite 30 years of “broken windows” theory being applied, it hasn’t broken black crime. Either more application or a different approach is needed.

3) Despite 30 years of “broken windows” theory being applied, it hasn’t broken black crime. Either more application or a different approach is needed.

New York City's homicide rate is 5.0 per 100,000. The distribution of homicide among New York City's Community Districts is such that black New Yorkers are exposed to rates which average to 8.6 per 100,000 in the milieu in which they live. The most troublesome districts are Ocean Hill / Brownsville and Bedford-Stuyvesant, which have homicide rates which have bounced around a set point of about 22 per 100,000 in recent years. The homicide rate in central Rochester is about 35 per 100,000.

East Orange, NJ, a town which is 87% black, has had over the last 15 years a homicide rate which has bounced around 17 per 100,000. That's half of Newark's homicide rate; Newark is 52% black. It's lower than the homicide rates of Rochester or Buffalo, N.Y. East Orange is not an affluent town, by the way. Incomes are below national means, much less Essex County, N.J. means. In recent years, East Orange has been recording homicide rates around 8 per 100,000 and index crime rates below the national means. Yes, they hired a police chief trained under Wm. Bratton. Heather MacDonald has written about the earlier phases of initiatives in East Orange.

Thinking about the multigenerational angle, when you get down to it, it’s Steve’s Men With Gold Chains theory. Indians, Armenians, Lebanese, Pakistanis, etc. are able to dominate business in black neighborhoods, and middleman business-legit and otherwise- in general.

Blacks , as has been mentioned, start gang recruitment so young because of the high attrition rate to prison and death, the lack of fatherlessness, and the constant flux of familial and household situations. It’s a permanent juvenile playground, and when you think about it, it’s really remarkable how some black gangs have lasted as long as they had. The VL’s, for example, date to the 1950′s. As I mentioned before, there is some multigenerational stuff going on in these gangs, but really only at a certain level. In the end, these gangs are just brand names. A lot of “chapters” are likely to have no leadership that lasts for even a decade. It’s just something for them to do.

Ice Cube can complain about asian bloodsuckers in “Black Korea” all he wants, but has it ever occurred to him that it’s incredible that one can go down MLK Blvd in any city and not find a black-owned gas station? When there is no familial stability, why bother building something up for the next generation? He needs to probably check out Amy Chua, too.

“Dutch Schultz (born Arthur Flegenheimer; August 6, 1901 – October 24, 1935) was a New York City-area German-Jewish American mobster of the 1920s and 1930s who made his fortune in organized crime-related activities, including bootlegging alcohol and the numbers racket. Weakened by two tax evasion trials led by prosecutor Thomas Dewey, Schultz’s rackets were also threatened by fellow mobster Lucky Luciano. In an attempt to avert his conviction, Schultz asked the Commission for permission to kill Dewey, which they refused. When Schultz disobeyed them and attempted to kill him anyway, the Commission ordered his murder in 1935.[1]

Arthur Simon Flegenheimer was born to German Jewish immigrants Herman and Emma Flegenheimer.[1] When Dutch was 15 years old, his father abandoned his family. The event traumatized Schultz, and he always denied his father had left them.[2] Following his father’s departure, Dutch left school to support himself and his mother. From 1916 to 1919, he worked as a feeder and pressman for the Clark Loose Leaf Company, Caxton Press, American Express, and Schultz Trucking in the Bronx.[3] He then worked at a neighborhood night club owned by a minor mobster, and began robbing craps games before turning to burglary. Schultz was caught breaking into an apartment and sent to the prison on Blackwell’s Island (now known as Roosevelt Island). A photograph of Schultz at age 18, during his incarceration, was published in the 2010 book “New York City Gangland.”[3]”

Re Dutch Shultz. Anyone speaking a germanic language or speaking with any sort of germanic accent might be termed "Dutch," in pre-WWII America. It's all a corruption of Deutsch. That's why the German American Amish are called Pennsylvania Dutch. Yiddish is a sort of corrupted German, so his contemporaries of non-Jewish extraction would have called him dutch in a general, lazy sort of way.

Re Dutch Shultz. Anyone speaking a germanic language or speaking with any sort of germanic accent might be termed "Dutch," in pre-WWII America. It's all a corruption of Deutsch. That's why the German American Amish are called Pennsylvania Dutch. Yiddish is a sort of corrupted German, so his contemporaries of non-Jewish extraction would have called him dutch in a general, lazy sort of way.

Corruption is subjective. It depends on what moral beliefs you hold. From the Saudis' perspective, the US is more corrupt.

“Corruption is subjective. It depends on what moral beliefs you hold. From the Saudis’ perspective, the US is more corrupt.”

I’m sure that they would, dear fellow. For that matter, there are scores of Black academics who will tell you that, seeing as how racism is the most corrupt thing on the planet, Whites are more corrupt than Blacks.We all have our standards.

I used to work in the mental health field in Chicago, I am retired. When I started, I was told not to mock any Italian gangster types. They were generous contributors to mental health organizations. They had so many relatives in the system. Mental illness is rampant in mafia families. Confidentiality prohibits me from naming names. Actually, I have forgotten their nmes.
When the Godfather movie came out, I laughed out loud. The mafia I met looked like lower class workers and they were barely literate.

Japan was nasty, brutal in WWII, but that's not what created the wealth Japan has today.

I think we're having trouble establishing some ground rules for what clean wealth acquired by ethnic group is. Something Gladwell has problems with too. I want only to consider current wealth for simplicity sake.

Finland hasn't been free for much of it's history. Even the US settler's money starting way back in the 1600s went to Sweden, not Finland. The current wealth of Finland is export driven with manufacturing as base. Much like Japan. So I'm going to give them a tie. Finland/Japan.

Black crime is literally the opposite of what the Mafia stood for. Like Vito Corleone, the Commission in New York never formally allowed drug dealing, which is why the Bonannos and later the Columbos were kicked out of it. The safest streets in New York City, even during the 80s, were always the ones Mafioso set up shop on, and that's not a legend; anyone from an Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn will attest to it.

True but let’s not get carried away with praise. The mafia were parasites that destroyed cities and undermined the country. Italians should be ashamed of that part of their past.

"I’m sorry, but that is a ludicrous assertion. To find a fairly group of people with a relatively clean record, you would need to look to history’s losers."

Not true. Look at Iceland, and Scandinavia in general.

Even in the colony age, they had hardly any colonies, all of small size, and they were the first to give them up, in large part because all the Scandinavian colonies were so unprofitable. Last time these guys were being real assholes was back in the Viking age.

Nowadays, they're known for not being assholes, and for quiet prosperity and rationalism. They've been known for this for a century +. That, and for being brain-washable lefty suckers, of course.

“Last time these guys were being real assholes was back in the Viking age.”

I feel like it was kind of jerky for the Swedes to invade half of Europe in the 17th century.

"I really don’t know how the Fins generated their wealth. If it wasn’t through settler wealth transfers, other dirty deeds. They win."

Why not do a little research. Compare and contrast the sins of the Finn with the sins of the Japanese...

Japan was nasty, brutal in WWII, but that’s not what created the wealth Japan has today.

I think we’re having trouble establishing some ground rules for what clean wealth acquired by ethnic group is. Something Gladwell has problems with too. I want only to consider current wealth for simplicity sake.

Finland hasn’t been free for much of it’s history. Even the US settler’s money starting way back in the 1600s went to Sweden, not Finland. The current wealth of Finland is export driven with manufacturing as base. Much like Japan. So I’m going to give them a tie. Finland/Japan.

"Japan was nasty, brutal in WWII, but that’s not what created the wealth Japan has today."

How so? Japanese corporations made profits off Japan's imperial expansion. Hence, money and infrastructure that derive from that brutality aided in Japan's rise.

And, of course, there is also the role of Japan's expansion during the Feudal era. For example, Hokkaido was not part of Japan from time immemorial:

"During the Muromachi period (1336–1573), the Japanese created a settlement at the south of the Oshima Peninsula. As more people moved to the settlement to avoid battles, disputes arose between the Japanese and the Ainu. The disputes eventually developed into a war. Takeda Nobuhiro killed the Ainu leader, Koshamain,[4] and defeated the opposition in 1457. Nobuhiro's descendants became the rulers of the Matsumae-han, which was granted exclusive trading rights with the Ainu in the Azuchi-Momoyama and Edo periods (1568–1868). The Matsumae family's economy relied upon trade with the Ainu. They held authority over the south of Ezochi until the end of the Edo period in 1868.

The Matsumae clan rule over the Ainu must be understood in the context of the expansion of the Japanese feudal state."

"During the Muromachi period (1336–1573), the disputes between Japanese and Ainu eventually developed into a war. Takeda Nobuhiro killed the Ainu leader, Koshamain. Many Ainu were subject to Japanese rule which led to violent Ainu revolt such as the Koshamain's Revolt in 1456 against Japanese influence and control on the island.

During the Tokugawa period (1600–1868) the Ainu became increasingly involved in trade with Japanese who controlled the southern portion of the island that is now called Hokkaido. The Bakufu government granted the Matsumae clan exclusive rights to trade with the Ainu in the northern part of the island. Later the Matsumae began to lease out trading-rights to Japanese merchants, and contact between Japanese and Ainu became more extensive. Throughout this period Ainu became increasingly dependent on goods imported by Japanese, and suffered from epidemic diseases such as smallpox.[10] Although the increased contact brought by trade between the Japanese and the Ainu contributed to increased mutual understanding, sometimes it led to conflict, occasionally intensifying into violent Ainu revolts, of which the most important was Shakushain's Revolt (1669–1672), an Ainu rebellion against Japanese authority.

Ainu population dropped significantly during these years of Matsumae and shogunate rule. In 1807, officials estimated the total population of Hokkaido Ainu at 26,256. Observations made by Matsuura Takeshiro, for example, illustrate concretely the dramatic decline of Ainu populations caused by epidemic diseases. 47 years later that number was reduced to 17,810 a 32% decline.[11] The Ainu in the 14th century were much more populous before invasions from the Japanese. Some Ainu oral stories, and the Matsumae clan's documents, recall and record several severe battles between the Ainu people and the invaders. After losing several battles, the Ainu people were enslaved.[12]

In 1868 there were about 15,000 Ainu in Hokkaido, 2000 in Sakhalin, and around 100 in the Kurile islands.[13]

In a 2009 news story, Japan Today reported, "Many Ainu were forced to work, essentially as slaves, for Wajin (ethnic Japanese), resulting in the breakup of families and the introduction of smallpox, measles, cholera and tuberculosis into their community. In 1869, the new Meiji government renamed Ezo as Hokkaido and unilaterally incorporated it into Japan. It banned the Ainu language, took Ainu land away, and prohibited salmon fishing and deer hunting."[14] They regarded as 'extremely inferior races', as one Diet Member had expressed it in 1907 (Hokkaido Utari Kyokai 19902190)"

Marshland: “I think they [blacks] really need a good dose of Shariah Law”

Back in the 90s, Chuck D of Public Enemy said he favored cutting off hands of thieves in the ghetto. He said brothers would think twice before committing crimes if they saw such a graphic punishment. This was in an interview given to a British paper – wish I could find it now.

I've tried to calculate what are the chances that the average black man on the street is a felon, commmited a felony, or been in jail.

It comes down to something like fifty percent.

Chances of the same ethnic Italian American in the 1970s? Chances of being in the mafia? chances of having relatives in the Mafia.

I have no doubt that the discrimination against Italians prior the the Godfather movies was high -- even in the 1980s we assumed every Italian with any money was mobbed up.

Three big differences:

1. Starting in the 1980s, Italy became cool. Or we became aware of it being cool. Hard to make fun of Italians when you're buying zegna suits.

2. There was a big divergence in the perception of italian mob crimes and the reality. Eventually the reality won, but it took a long time. I don't think people today see an Italian name and think of mobsters if they drive a Benz.

3. A huge and massive crackdown on the mob removed most of the reality of Italian crime.

Differences with black crime:

1) you can push black males as the ultimate alphas, but mostly they are reverting to roles they have always been good at -- athletics, singing and dancing. They make sweet music.

2) The reality of black crime is much much larger. I agree that if I see a black doctor I don't think he is dealing crack on the side. But that is the talented tenth, everyone else may be. Opposite of the Italian situation. Lack of a family structure is a key difference.

3) Despite 30 years of "broken windows" theory being applied, it hasn't broken black crime. Either more application or a different approach is needed.

3) Despite 30 years of “broken windows” theory being applied, it hasn’t broken black crime. Either more application or a different approach is needed.

New York City’s homicide rate is 5.0 per 100,000. The distribution of homicide among New York City’s Community Districts is such that black New Yorkers are exposed to rates which average to 8.6 per 100,000 in the milieu in which they live. The most troublesome districts are Ocean Hill / Brownsville and Bedford-Stuyvesant, which have homicide rates which have bounced around a set point of about 22 per 100,000 in recent years. The homicide rate in central Rochester is about 35 per 100,000.

East Orange, NJ, a town which is 87% black, has had over the last 15 years a homicide rate which has bounced around 17 per 100,000. That’s half of Newark’s homicide rate; Newark is 52% black. It’s lower than the homicide rates of Rochester or Buffalo, N.Y. East Orange is not an affluent town, by the way. Incomes are below national means, much less Essex County, N.J. means. In recent years, East Orange has been recording homicide rates around 8 per 100,000 and index crime rates below the national means. Yes, they hired a police chief trained under Wm. Bratton. Heather MacDonald has written about the earlier phases of initiatives in East Orange.

NAMs see Italian men as more alpha male than SWPL WASP men. Lots of NAMs are also scared of Southern Redneck males, again it is the alpha male factor. Redneck men in states like Louisiana and Texas are seen as more rugged and less soft than SWPL men in New England for example. Another reason many NAMs fear Rednecks is they know the reputation that Rednecks have of being armed to the teeth.

Try that knock out polar bear hunting game in Cajun country for example and the end result will be a lot of Black youths getting shot. Rednecks don’t take no crap from Obama’s sons.

NAMs see Italian men as more alpha male than SWPL WASP men. Lots of NAMs are also scared of Southern Redneck males, again it is the alpha male factor. Redneck men in states like Louisiana and Texas are seen as more rugged and less soft than SWPL men in New England for example. Another reason many NAMs fear Rednecks is they know the reputation that Rednecks have of being armed to the teeth.

Try that knock out polar bear hunting game in Cajun country for example and the end result will be a lot of Black youths getting shot. Rednecks don’t take no crap from Obama’s sons.<<

Travelling in the US I was mostly in the South and South-West, so most of the men I saw were macho redneck types. I did see some American SWPLs though, and I was struck by how extremely neotenous and diffident they seemed, much moreso on average than middle-class Englishmen. I guess that explains why Hollywood can cast Benedict Cumberbatch as a superhuman in the last Star Trek movie (which I watched last night - terrible).
Likewise I think it was Steve who commented on how strange it was to see young whites in Boston out drinking, acting like they owned the ground they were standing on. That would be something you would see routinely in any part of Britain.

My feeling is that when it comes to 'fight or flight', white American men seem to divide very strongly by caste into fighters (eg Rednecks) and flighters (eg SWPLs). I have not seen this sort of divide nearly so marked in other Anglo or northern European countries, but it seems common in some third world nations such as India.

My family lived in north Tulsa in the late 1960's, just a few blocks from the predominantly black part of town. After watching the black uprisings on TV going on in other American cities in 1968, Dad, who grew up on a farm in Oklahoma, bought a surplus Lee-Enfield .303 rifle and ammo to protect the family.

Fortunately Tulsa's young black men behaved themselves. Their elders probably told them what Tulsa's redneck population did to the black community in 1921, and they decided against starting their own riot.

That goes to show one of the advantages of growing up in a town full of rednecks, many of whom had also served in the U.S. armed forces and had experience in combat.

Gladwell is being dense. But there is a general point here. There isn't a single ethnic group that hasn't become rich through some form of theft or cheating. Possibly the cleanest wealth belongs to the Japanese, even considering their early 20th C. But, don't hold me to that.

The 1942-45 experience melted down most of the Japanese ‘wealth’ accumulated, and Japanese Americans are not well known for producing very wealthy people, although they do have quite a solid upper middle class.

Japan was nasty, brutal in WWII, but that's not what created the wealth Japan has today.

I think we're having trouble establishing some ground rules for what clean wealth acquired by ethnic group is. Something Gladwell has problems with too. I want only to consider current wealth for simplicity sake.

Finland hasn't been free for much of it's history. Even the US settler's money starting way back in the 1600s went to Sweden, not Finland. The current wealth of Finland is export driven with manufacturing as base. Much like Japan. So I'm going to give them a tie. Finland/Japan.

Finland’s recent wealth was entirely because of Nokia, which is no more which means Finland is now back to selling Santa Claus dolls.

Good point: The Mafia had the power to control its members, and to punish / expel any loose cannons. Not so modern black gangsters. Even motorcycle gangs were more disciplined.

My parents and older friends also remember Italian immigrants at their schools. The kids from Mafia families were the nice guys, and very often nerds. They often wore suits and bow-ties when everyone else would wear jeans. But nobody ever bullied them or dissed them. Teachers all gave them good marks. And despite being nerds ... they were about the only nerds I knew who weren't smart or overachievers. Or maybe they were. The junior Mafiosi were never involved in school activities, sports, or clubs. When they went home, their parents taught them Mafia Science 1o1.

The other major group of Italian immigrants were the wannabe-Mafiosi. These guys weren't from the right families and could never be, but they made a big thing about being gangsters complete with switchblades and leather jackets. Anyone with half an eye could tell who was Cosa Nostra and who wasn't, even though actual membership was a top secret. And those leather-jacketed thugs from auto shop were terrified of the real Mafia kids.

The other major group of Italian immigrants were the wannabe-Mafiosi. These guys weren’t from the right families and could never be…

In the 1990 film “Goodfellas,” Ray Liotta’s character (Henry Hill) and Robert DeNiro’s character (Jimmy Conway) couldn’t be “made men” because their mothers weren’t full-blooded Italians. Hill and Conway could only be “associates” to real mafia members. Hill said it was “real greaseball stuff.”

“Surely there must be hundreds—if not thousands—of potential professional athletes in that number, not to mention scientists or entrepreneurs or poets.”

Well it is fair enough to say some would have been able to make excellent money as pro sportsmen or rappers if they had put in that all important 10,000 hours of practice. But then ALL of them certainly would have been able to able to make a solid living as plumbers if they had just a little self control.

Until recently, very few became a ‘made man’ in the Mafia without having committed a murder. Gotti’s IQ was measured at 140 in prison. I think I’ve read somewhere that he tested 150 in high school (which his teachers didn’t want to believe)

The Mafia problem kinda parallels the Jewish problem; it’s not Italians’ fault that Sicily is in Italy.

“When whites walk down the street, they are more nervous when they encounter a black man than when they encounter a white one.” I suspect that blacks are also more nervous of other blacks than they are of whites.

Which puts the threshold for understanding these simple patterns at somewhere below the black mean IQ of 85…

The Black community has always done better with stricter enforcement. This would be another 60s – 70s’ style disaster. God I hope no one takes this advice.

Even Africans know blacks aren’t suited to soft gov’t and European levels of freedom. NPR types will wave this off as “developing countries” and “legacy of colonialism,” but I think HBD knows better.

America has one of the highest incarceration rates in recorded history, for example. (We have six times more people behind bars, on a per capita basis, than Europe does.) That works out to about 2 million people—the majority of whom are young men, and a disproportionate share of those young men are young black men. Surely there must be hundreds—if not thousands—of potential professional athletes in that number, not to mention scientists or entrepreneurs or poets.

God forbid anyone suggest that we have so many people in prison because we have so many blacks (and the money to build prisons).

I just read a book called the Chitlin Circuit, and details how every bronzetown on the R&B circuit had its “stroll” with lots of drug dealing, stabbings, beatdowns, all just normal and taken for granted. There were a few entrepreneurs who capitalized on it with numbers games, juke joints, cathouses and the like. Periodically the white governments would go on a moral cleanup campaign but the places usually bounced back. Well except Beale St in Memphis, which was pretty much razed.

Right. Gladwell would probably rather die than admit that “Integration” is the reason we can’t leave blacks to their own devices as he suggests. We could easily implement a laissez faire approach to black crime, if we could wall the rest of society off.

Even Africans know blacks aren’t suited to soft gov’t and European levels of freedom. NPR types will wave this off as “developing countries” and “legacy of colonialism,” but I think HBD knows better.--
Ten of the twelve Anglo-Caribbean countries have had parliamentary government without interruption since at least 1967 (and much earlier in certain cases). One (Guyana) had a run of years (1970-92) under a political machine which made ample use of vote fraud and one (Grenada) actually did have periods of boss rule and party-police state rule (1974-83). There is no history of military rule nor of caudillo rule either in these loci. All of these places are given good marks by Freedom House for the congeniality of their public life.

The level of affluence of these countries as expressed in per capita income (ppp) ranges from 15% to 65% of the American level, with the poorest having standards of living roughly equivalent to the United States ca. 1900 and the most affluent the United States ca. 1980. (It might interest you racial obsessives that the two poorest Anglo-Caribbean states are the least phenotypically negroid).

"Dutch Schultz (born Arthur Flegenheimer; August 6, 1901 – October 24, 1935) was a New York City-area German-Jewish American mobster of the 1920s and 1930s who made his fortune in organized crime-related activities, including bootlegging alcohol and the numbers racket. Weakened by two tax evasion trials led by prosecutor Thomas Dewey, Schultz's rackets were also threatened by fellow mobster Lucky Luciano. In an attempt to avert his conviction, Schultz asked the Commission for permission to kill Dewey, which they refused. When Schultz disobeyed them and attempted to kill him anyway, the Commission ordered his murder in 1935.[1]

Arthur Simon Flegenheimer was born to German Jewish immigrants Herman and Emma Flegenheimer.[1] When Dutch was 15 years old, his father abandoned his family. The event traumatized Schultz, and he always denied his father had left them.[2] Following his father's departure, Dutch left school to support himself and his mother. From 1916 to 1919, he worked as a feeder and pressman for the Clark Loose Leaf Company, Caxton Press, American Express, and Schultz Trucking in the Bronx.[3] He then worked at a neighborhood night club owned by a minor mobster, and began robbing craps games before turning to burglary. Schultz was caught breaking into an apartment and sent to the prison on Blackwell's Island (now known as Roosevelt Island). A photograph of Schultz at age 18, during his incarceration, was published in the 2010 book "New York City Gangland."[3]"

(WIKIPEDIA)

Re Dutch Shultz. Anyone speaking a germanic language or speaking with any sort of germanic accent might be termed “Dutch,” in pre-WWII America. It’s all a corruption of Deutsch. That’s why the German American Amish are called Pennsylvania Dutch. Yiddish is a sort of corrupted German, so his contemporaries of non-Jewish extraction would have called him dutch in a general, lazy sort of way.

"Dutch Schultz (born Arthur Flegenheimer; August 6, 1901 – October 24, 1935) was a New York City-area German-Jewish American mobster of the 1920s and 1930s who made his fortune in organized crime-related activities, including bootlegging alcohol and the numbers racket. Weakened by two tax evasion trials led by prosecutor Thomas Dewey, Schultz's rackets were also threatened by fellow mobster Lucky Luciano. In an attempt to avert his conviction, Schultz asked the Commission for permission to kill Dewey, which they refused. When Schultz disobeyed them and attempted to kill him anyway, the Commission ordered his murder in 1935.[1]

Arthur Simon Flegenheimer was born to German Jewish immigrants Herman and Emma Flegenheimer.[1] When Dutch was 15 years old, his father abandoned his family. The event traumatized Schultz, and he always denied his father had left them.[2] Following his father's departure, Dutch left school to support himself and his mother. From 1916 to 1919, he worked as a feeder and pressman for the Clark Loose Leaf Company, Caxton Press, American Express, and Schultz Trucking in the Bronx.[3] He then worked at a neighborhood night club owned by a minor mobster, and began robbing craps games before turning to burglary. Schultz was caught breaking into an apartment and sent to the prison on Blackwell's Island (now known as Roosevelt Island). A photograph of Schultz at age 18, during his incarceration, was published in the 2010 book "New York City Gangland."[3]"

(WIKIPEDIA)

Re Dutch Shultz. Anyone speaking a germanic language or speaking with any sort of germanic accent might be termed “Dutch,” in pre-WWII America. It’s all a corruption of Deutsch. That’s why the German American Amish are called Pennsylvania Dutch. Yiddish is a sort of corrupted German, so his contemporaries of non-Jewish extraction would have called him dutch in a general, lazy sort of way.

"Re Dutch Shultz. Anyone speaking a germanic language or speaking with any sort of germanic accent might be termed “Dutch,” in pre-WWII America. It’s all a corruption of Deutsch. That’s why the German American Amish are called Pennsylvania Dutch. Yiddish is a sort of corrupted German, so his contemporaries of non-Jewish extraction would have called him dutch in a general, lazy sort of way."

Japan was nasty, brutal in WWII, but that's not what created the wealth Japan has today.

I think we're having trouble establishing some ground rules for what clean wealth acquired by ethnic group is. Something Gladwell has problems with too. I want only to consider current wealth for simplicity sake.

Finland hasn't been free for much of it's history. Even the US settler's money starting way back in the 1600s went to Sweden, not Finland. The current wealth of Finland is export driven with manufacturing as base. Much like Japan. So I'm going to give them a tie. Finland/Japan.

“Japan was nasty, brutal in WWII, but that’s not what created the wealth Japan has today.”

How so? Japanese corporations made profits off Japan’s imperial expansion. Hence, money and infrastructure that derive from that brutality aided in Japan’s rise.

And, of course, there is also the role of Japan’s expansion during the Feudal era. For example, Hokkaido was not part of Japan from time immemorial:

“During the Muromachi period (1336–1573), the Japanese created a settlement at the south of the Oshima Peninsula. As more people moved to the settlement to avoid battles, disputes arose between the Japanese and the Ainu. The disputes eventually developed into a war. Takeda Nobuhiro killed the Ainu leader, Koshamain,[4] and defeated the opposition in 1457. Nobuhiro’s descendants became the rulers of the Matsumae-han, which was granted exclusive trading rights with the Ainu in the Azuchi-Momoyama and Edo periods (1568–1868). The Matsumae family’s economy relied upon trade with the Ainu. They held authority over the south of Ezochi until the end of the Edo period in 1868.

The Matsumae clan rule over the Ainu must be understood in the context of the expansion of the Japanese feudal state.”

They are into fight-or-flight. As black kids grow up getting whupped as well as whupping others, they have no illusions about alpha dignity as some kind of ideal. When they can fight and win, they act tough. But when they gotta run like a mofo, they just run like a mofo and don’t look back.

It’s like animals in the wild. A leopard may act big and tough with a smaller animal, but if it sees a tiger, it’s gonna turn pussycat and run like a mothafuc*a. Negroes be like that.

Japan was nasty, brutal in WWII, but that's not what created the wealth Japan has today.

I think we're having trouble establishing some ground rules for what clean wealth acquired by ethnic group is. Something Gladwell has problems with too. I want only to consider current wealth for simplicity sake.

Finland hasn't been free for much of it's history. Even the US settler's money starting way back in the 1600s went to Sweden, not Finland. The current wealth of Finland is export driven with manufacturing as base. Much like Japan. So I'm going to give them a tie. Finland/Japan.

More info on Japan’s Hokkaido landgrab:

“During the Muromachi period (1336–1573), the disputes between Japanese and Ainu eventually developed into a war. Takeda Nobuhiro killed the Ainu leader, Koshamain. Many Ainu were subject to Japanese rule which led to violent Ainu revolt such as the Koshamain’s Revolt in 1456 against Japanese influence and control on the island.

During the Tokugawa period (1600–1868) the Ainu became increasingly involved in trade with Japanese who controlled the southern portion of the island that is now called Hokkaido. The Bakufu government granted the Matsumae clan exclusive rights to trade with the Ainu in the northern part of the island. Later the Matsumae began to lease out trading-rights to Japanese merchants, and contact between Japanese and Ainu became more extensive. Throughout this period Ainu became increasingly dependent on goods imported by Japanese, and suffered from epidemic diseases such as smallpox.[10] Although the increased contact brought by trade between the Japanese and the Ainu contributed to increased mutual understanding, sometimes it led to conflict, occasionally intensifying into violent Ainu revolts, of which the most important was Shakushain’s Revolt (1669–1672), an Ainu rebellion against Japanese authority.

Ainu population dropped significantly during these years of Matsumae and shogunate rule. In 1807, officials estimated the total population of Hokkaido Ainu at 26,256. Observations made by Matsuura Takeshiro, for example, illustrate concretely the dramatic decline of Ainu populations caused by epidemic diseases. 47 years later that number was reduced to 17,810 a 32% decline.[11] The Ainu in the 14th century were much more populous before invasions from the Japanese. Some Ainu oral stories, and the Matsumae clan’s documents, recall and record several severe battles between the Ainu people and the invaders. After losing several battles, the Ainu people were enslaved.[12]

In 1868 there were about 15,000 Ainu in Hokkaido, 2000 in Sakhalin, and around 100 in the Kurile islands.[13]

In a 2009 news story, Japan Today reported, “Many Ainu were forced to work, essentially as slaves, for Wajin (ethnic Japanese), resulting in the breakup of families and the introduction of smallpox, measles, cholera and tuberculosis into their community. In 1869, the new Meiji government renamed Ezo as Hokkaido and unilaterally incorporated it into Japan. It banned the Ainu language, took Ainu land away, and prohibited salmon fishing and deer hunting.”[14] They regarded as ‘extremely inferior races’, as one Diet Member had expressed it in 1907 (Hokkaido Utari Kyokai 19902190)”

My experience in New Jersey with both Mafia and Italian American urban political machines, bears out Steve’s observation. Newark NJ was under Italian political control when the riots of 1967 broke out, ditto Trenton.

A combination of shortsightedness and inability to separate public responsibility with personal power made them disasterous managers. The only neighborhoods they serviced where their tribal enclaves. Nepotism was so close to a religion that they honestly doubted why anyone would object. A leader took care of his family. It was connections over merit all the way.

The Northeast labored under a corruption tax that indeed did helped propel businesses and individuals South and West.

These ignorant political tribalism meant a decades-long parasitic sapping of NJ urban wealth and energy. The Blacks inherited cities that were ripe for a fall.

The saving grace of Italian Americans is their devotion to marketable trades and family businesses.

Re Dutch Shultz. Anyone speaking a germanic language or speaking with any sort of germanic accent might be termed "Dutch," in pre-WWII America. It's all a corruption of Deutsch. That's why the German American Amish are called Pennsylvania Dutch. Yiddish is a sort of corrupted German, so his contemporaries of non-Jewish extraction would have called him dutch in a general, lazy sort of way.

“Re Dutch Shultz. Anyone speaking a germanic language or speaking with any sort of germanic accent might be termed “Dutch,” in pre-WWII America. It’s all a corruption of Deutsch. That’s why the German American Amish are called Pennsylvania Dutch. Yiddish is a sort of corrupted German, so his contemporaries of non-Jewish extraction would have called him dutch in a general, lazy sort of way.”

On a lighter note: Former crime syndicate made guy Michael Francize (sp.?) went to prison, came out converted to Christianity and forsook his wayward dealing ways. He used to be involved in various scams and schemes but has totally gone straight. Now he tends to give speeches and has a charity to get folks off of gambling addiction.

He was also briefly mentioned (in the scene where the narrator names his list of various fellas/wise guys that he knew were part of the ol’ crew) in Scorsese’s Goodfellas.

See? Happy endings after all. He left the family business for good, went straight, and is probably doing quite well because of it.

Are blacks capable of or interested in sustained, organized planning and attentive feedback loop? I can’t think of an example. Of course there are individual exceptions but en masse the essence of their sensibility is to be casual, unburdened by any debilitating convictions, cool.

In African art the expression of the beetle-faced pregnant woman. Unthinking sensual knowledge.

Are blacks capable of or interested in sustained, organized planning and attentive feedback loop? I can't think of an example. Of course there are individual exceptions but en masse the essence of their sensibility is to be casual, unburdened by any debilitating convictions, cool.

In African art the expression of the beetle-faced pregnant woman. Unthinking sensual knowledge.

Are blacks capable of or interested in sustained, organized planning and attentive feedback loop? I can’t think of an example.

The Mafia problem kinda parallels the Jewish problem; it's not Italians' fault that Sicily is in Italy.

“When whites walk down the street, they are more nervous when they encounter a black man than when they encounter a white one.” I suspect that blacks are also more nervous of other blacks than they are of whites.

Which puts the threshold for understanding these simple patterns at somewhere below the black mean IQ of 85...

The Black community has always done better with stricter enforcement. This would be another 60s – 70s’ style disaster. God I hope no one takes this advice.

Even Africans know blacks aren't suited to soft gov't and European levels of freedom. NPR types will wave this off as "developing countries" and "legacy of colonialism," but I think HBD knows better.

America has one of the highest incarceration rates in recorded history, for example. (We have six times more people behind bars, on a per capita basis, than Europe does.) That works out to about 2 million people—the majority of whom are young men, and a disproportionate share of those young men are young black men. Surely there must be hundreds—if not thousands—of potential professional athletes in that number, not to mention scientists or entrepreneurs or poets.

God forbid anyone suggest that we have so many people in prison because we have so many blacks (and the money to build prisons).

I just read a book called the Chitlin Circuit, and details how every bronzetown on the R&B circuit had its “stroll” with lots of drug dealing, stabbings, beatdowns, all just normal and taken for granted. There were a few entrepreneurs who capitalized on it with numbers games, juke joints, cathouses and the like. Periodically the white governments would go on a moral cleanup campaign but the places usually bounced back. Well except Beale St in Memphis, which was pretty much razed.

Right. Gladwell would probably rather die than admit that "Integration" is the reason we can't leave blacks to their own devices as he suggests. We could easily implement a laissez faire approach to black crime, if we could wall the rest of society off.

Even Africans know blacks aren’t suited to soft gov’t and European levels of freedom. NPR types will wave this off as “developing countries” and “legacy of colonialism,” but I think HBD knows better.
–
Ten of the twelve Anglo-Caribbean countries have had parliamentary government without interruption since at least 1967 (and much earlier in certain cases). One (Guyana) had a run of years (1970-92) under a political machine which made ample use of vote fraud and one (Grenada) actually did have periods of boss rule and party-police state rule (1974-83). There is no history of military rule nor of caudillo rule either in these loci. All of these places are given good marks by Freedom House for the congeniality of their public life.

The level of affluence of these countries as expressed in per capita income (ppp) ranges from 15% to 65% of the American level, with the poorest having standards of living roughly equivalent to the United States ca. 1900 and the most affluent the United States ca. 1980. (It might interest you racial obsessives that the two poorest Anglo-Caribbean states are the least phenotypically negroid).

Right. Gladwell would probably rather die than admit that “Integration” is the reason we can’t leave blacks to their own devices as he suggests. We could easily implement a laissez faire approach to black crime, if we could wall the rest of society off.

Why would we do that?

–

You’re neglecting some stevosphere orthodoxies: urban slums are actually reservations which keep the black population away from the rest of the city. Any attempt at containing social pathology through investment in law enforcement is wrong as it is ‘war socialism’. In any case, no one ever does that. Apparent declines in crime in inner-city setting result from contrived expulsion of black males to surrounding communities. If you can find no evidence that there have been increases in index crimes in surrounding communities or appreciable declines in the population of black males it’s because the statistics have been fabricated.

"Surely there must be hundreds—if not thousands—of potential professional athletes in that number, not to mention scientists or entrepreneurs or poets."

Well it is fair enough to say some would have been able to make excellent money as pro sportsmen or rappers if they had put in that all important 10,000 hours of practice. But then ALL of them certainly would have been able to able to make a solid living as plumbers if they had just a little self control.

Until recently, very few became a 'made man' in the Mafia without having committed a murder. Gotti's IQ was measured at 140 in prison. I think I've read somewhere that he tested 150 in high school (which his teachers didn't want to believe)

Gotti’s IQ was measured at 140 in prison. I think I’ve read somewhere that he tested 150 in high school (which his teachers didn’t want to believe)

He’s like the Kleiner Perkins of stupid theories. I think James Bowman’s written about this kind of hepcat derangement as the inevitable result of the “Everything You Know Is Wrong” meme–9 out of 10 guys in Napoleon hats waving from the overpass agree

Something alluded to in the Soprano’s and made clear in Sicilian-American families is that generational organized crime is a failing both of the parents and the individual. Older made men in the family are treated with the same respect as other hardworking men, but their grandsons are viewed with disdain if the perpetuate the family enterprise. They are referred to as scarfaggio if they choose criminal lifestyles when they have other options.

I’ve lived and worked in Washington, dc, for decades. I used to have a studio in the old black downtown in the 70s. I have known dozens of blacks at all social levels for many years and of course know what blacks accomplish (or rather don’t) when they have the opportunity.

Instead of impertinent personal suggestions why not answer my query? Where are the cultural artifacts that indicate I’m wrong? In fact, let’s start with dc. In the 50 years or so that blacks have controlled the center of political life in the nations capital with budgets of $18,000 per capita per year what did they accomplish?

Stop talking rot, and you'll be treated more politely. For now, you get what you earn.

==

It's actually 40 years since the home rule charter was adopted. Core city politicians are seldom impressive, Rudolph Giuliani being a notable exception. As for black core city mayors, they've tended toward two tacks: orderly management of decline (and could we have a little more federal swag) and actively destructive behavior. Carl Stokes and Kurt Schmoke were type A; Coleman Young and Marion Barry were type B. An important exception is Robert Bowser of East Orange, who had some real successes re quality of life concerns.

--

There are people all up and down the social scale in any subpopulation. The black population has a smaller salaried and small business portion. I have no clue why that social fact would lead a non-idiot to say blacks are not capable of " sustained, organized planning and attentive feedback loop".

-

And what's the point of 'answering' you? You regard the everyday business and professional element in the black population as unworthy of notice and you've already defined as inconsequential unusual achievers (because they're 'exceptions'). You've got your story and your sticking to it.

There is not a hidden counter-intuitive clue anywhere to be found within these (we are told) representative-sample Italian criminals. Just try transposing it to other ethnic mafias, and Gladwellian praxis falls apart immediately. I’m not holding my breath for the St. Nikolai’s Anti-Street-Racing Benevolent Society. If ’60s-era Cuban mob entrepreneurs strike you as stolidly bourgeois, how about the ones who showed up next? Add a few tablespoons of white powder to get the 1981 Miami homicide rate. And in that vein, Gladwell should consult the Michael Bay film “Bad Boys II” to explicate the social mobility tactics deployed by the Haitian gangsters. They were innovative, sure

Are blacks capable of or interested in sustained, organized planning and attentive feedback loop? I can't think of an example. Of course there are individual exceptions but en masse the essence of their sensibility is to be casual, unburdened by any debilitating convictions, cool.

In African art the expression of the beetle-faced pregnant woman. Unthinking sensual knowledge.

The Brits say the Ashanti were relatively organized and sophisticated, the most cultured people they encountered in Africa. In general though I think the answer to your question is no.

Black elites whether in Detroit, Haiti or Africa tend to exploit the poor for their own immediate gain instead of long term investments that benefit the masses.

I used to work in the mental health field in Chicago, I am retired. When I started, I was told not to mock any Italian gangster types. They were generous contributors to mental health organizations. They had so many relatives in the system. Mental illness is rampant in mafia families. Confidentiality prohibits me from naming names. Actually, I have forgotten their nmes.
When the Godfather movie came out, I laughed out loud. The mafia I met looked like lower class workers and they were barely literate.

I’ll got a somewhat different take. This is not Malcolm at his Gladwelliest YET. In other words, he’s just hitting his stride regarding Gladwellian remarks/comments/articles, books etc. He’s got a few more tricks to pull out of his hat, so to speak. Granted, this particular remark set a new level for him to attain, but there’s certainly a few more left to go.

NAMs see Italian men as more alpha male than SWPL WASP men. Lots of NAMs are also scared of Southern Redneck males, again it is the alpha male factor. Redneck men in states like Louisiana and Texas are seen as more rugged and less soft than SWPL men in New England for example. Another reason many NAMs fear Rednecks is they know the reputation that Rednecks have of being armed to the teeth.

It’s not so much the alpha male factor, but the right to self-defense. Not only the laws, but the social customs differ in New York and Texas. Just ask Bernard Goetz and Joe Horn.

NAMs see Italian men as more alpha male than SWPL WASP men. Lots of NAMs are also scared of Southern Redneck males, again it is the alpha male factor. Redneck men in states like Louisiana and Texas are seen as more rugged and less soft than SWPL men in New England for example. Another reason many NAMs fear Rednecks is they know the reputation that Rednecks have of being armed to the teeth.

Try that knock out polar bear hunting game in Cajun country for example and the end result will be a lot of Black youths getting shot. Rednecks don't take no crap from Obama's sons.

NAMs see Italian men as more alpha male than SWPL WASP men. Lots of NAMs are also scared of Southern Redneck males, again it is the alpha male factor. Redneck men in states like Louisiana and Texas are seen as more rugged and less soft than SWPL men in New England for example. Another reason many NAMs fear Rednecks is they know the reputation that Rednecks have of being armed to the teeth.

Try that knock out polar bear hunting game in Cajun country for example and the end result will be a lot of Black youths getting shot. Rednecks don’t take no crap from Obama’s sons.<<

Travelling in the US I was mostly in the South and South-West, so most of the men I saw were macho redneck types. I did see some American SWPLs though, and I was struck by how extremely neotenous and diffident they seemed, much moreso on average than middle-class Englishmen. I guess that explains why Hollywood can cast Benedict Cumberbatch as a superhuman in the last Star Trek movie (which I watched last night – terrible).
Likewise I think it was Steve who commented on how strange it was to see young whites in Boston out drinking, acting like they owned the ground they were standing on. That would be something you would see routinely in any part of Britain.

My feeling is that when it comes to 'fight or flight', white American men seem to divide very strongly by caste into fighters (eg Rednecks) and flighters (eg SWPLs). I have not seen this sort of divide nearly so marked in other Anglo or northern European countries, but it seems common in some third world nations such as India.

I know Gladwell has remarked upon being Canadian and thus misunderstanding aspects of sub-Canadian life — noting this in the latter half of the NYer text:

“most were bench and technical warrants for failure to appear in court or to pay court fees, or for violations of probation or parole”

Interesting sidebar here: Ignoring an order to appear is still a big no-no if you AREN’T black. Perhaps Gladwell could cite new research from Vox about the obsolescence of bench warrants, however, bringing down the hammer on people who throw jury summons away or accumulate traffic tickets is just one of our eccentric customs ’round these parts

“My feeling is that when it comes to ‘fight or flight’, white American men seem to divide very strongly by caste into fighters (eg Rednecks) and flighters (eg SWPLs). I have not seen this sort of divide nearly so marked in other Anglo or northern European countries, but it seems common in some third world nations such as India.”

Rednecks practice White flight as well, which is why most big cities in the South tend to be predominantly Black like Baton Rouge, New Orleans (or as Blacks call it Nawlins), Memphis, Birmingham, Little Rock, Atlanta (or as Blacks call it the ATL), Jackson, Savannah, etc.

Atlanta is a large metropolis; the rest range from the low end of middling (Savannah) to the high end of middling (Memphis). Jackson and Memphis are metropolitan settlements with a black majority. In all but one of the remainder, the core municipality has a black majority, not the settlement as a whole. In Little Rock, both the whole settlement and the core municipality have white majorities.

>>Rednecks practice White flight as well, which is why most big cities in the South tend to be predominantly Black like Baton Rouge, New Orleans (or as Blacks call it Nawlins), Memphis, Birmingham, Little Rock, Atlanta (or as Blacks call it the ATL), Jackson, Savannah, etc.

Rednecks dominate the suburbs and rural regions of the South.<<

True to a degree, but my experience was that the South (not counting DC area as South) was a lot more racially integrated than the North. To the extent that my redneck brother in law & his friend once got in a bar fight with blacks... (He knocked a black guy's drink onto him, then said 'Calm down, you're not going to melt!' Apparently the Wizard of Oz reference went over the subject's head, and a fracas ensued, police were eventually called.)

"My feeling is that when it comes to 'fight or flight', white American men seem to divide very strongly by caste into fighters (eg Rednecks) and flighters (eg SWPLs). I have not seen this sort of divide nearly so marked in other Anglo or northern European countries, but it seems common in some third world nations such as India."

Rednecks practice White flight as well, which is why most big cities in the South tend to be predominantly Black like Baton Rouge, New Orleans (or as Blacks call it Nawlins), Memphis, Birmingham, Little Rock, Atlanta (or as Blacks call it the ATL), Jackson, Savannah, etc.

Rednecks dominate the suburbs and rural regions of the South.

People of British descent in the U.S. tend to head for the frontiers. They seldom hunker down and defend urban turf.

Frontiers like Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Westchester? "British" Americans, like all other whites tend to move to the suburban frontiers outside major financial centers. Except, of course, for those descended from farmers.

When Capt. Cook returned from his second voyage his patron the Earl of Sandwich adopted a south pacific chief, one Omai. Status marking. The Earl was signaling in a world dominated by european men that he was above the fray.

"My feeling is that when it comes to 'fight or flight', white American men seem to divide very strongly by caste into fighters (eg Rednecks) and flighters (eg SWPLs). I have not seen this sort of divide nearly so marked in other Anglo or northern European countries, but it seems common in some third world nations such as India."

Rednecks practice White flight as well, which is why most big cities in the South tend to be predominantly Black like Baton Rouge, New Orleans (or as Blacks call it Nawlins), Memphis, Birmingham, Little Rock, Atlanta (or as Blacks call it the ATL), Jackson, Savannah, etc.

Atlanta is a large metropolis; the rest range from the low end of middling (Savannah) to the high end of middling (Memphis). Jackson and Memphis are metropolitan settlements with a black majority. In all but one of the remainder, the core municipality has a black majority, not the settlement as a whole. In Little Rock, both the whole settlement and the core municipality have white majorities.

I've lived and worked in Washington, dc, for decades. I used to have a studio in the old black downtown in the 70s. I have known dozens of blacks at all social levels for many years and of course know what blacks accomplish (or rather don't) when they have the opportunity.

Instead of impertinent personal suggestions why not answer my query? Where are the cultural artifacts that indicate I'm wrong? In fact, let's start with dc. In the 50 years or so that blacks have controlled the center of political life in the nations capital with budgets of $18,000 per capita per year what did they accomplish?

Instead of impertinent personal suggestions

Stop talking rot, and you’ll be treated more politely. For now, you get what you earn.

==

It’s actually 40 years since the home rule charter was adopted. Core city politicians are seldom impressive, Rudolph Giuliani being a notable exception. As for black core city mayors, they’ve tended toward two tacks: orderly management of decline (and could we have a little more federal swag) and actively destructive behavior. Carl Stokes and Kurt Schmoke were type A; Coleman Young and Marion Barry were type B. An important exception is Robert Bowser of East Orange, who had some real successes re quality of life concerns.

–

There are people all up and down the social scale in any subpopulation. The black population has a smaller salaried and small business portion. I have no clue why that social fact would lead a non-idiot to say blacks are not capable of ” sustained, organized planning and attentive feedback loop”.

-

And what’s the point of ‘answering’ you? You regard the everyday business and professional element in the black population as unworthy of notice and you’ve already defined as inconsequential unusual achievers (because they’re ‘exceptions’). You’ve got your story and your sticking to it.

I think I just explained to you that I have been involved personally and professionally for many years with black people. So their behavior is hardly unworthy of notice to me. Far from it. My livelihood and at times my life depends on my noticing.

NAMs see Italian men as more alpha male than SWPL WASP men. Lots of NAMs are also scared of Southern Redneck males, again it is the alpha male factor. Redneck men in states like Louisiana and Texas are seen as more rugged and less soft than SWPL men in New England for example. Another reason many NAMs fear Rednecks is they know the reputation that Rednecks have of being armed to the teeth.

Try that knock out polar bear hunting game in Cajun country for example and the end result will be a lot of Black youths getting shot. Rednecks don't take no crap from Obama's sons.

My family lived in north Tulsa in the late 1960′s, just a few blocks from the predominantly black part of town. After watching the black uprisings on TV going on in other American cities in 1968, Dad, who grew up on a farm in Oklahoma, bought a surplus Lee-Enfield .303 rifle and ammo to protect the family.

Fortunately Tulsa’s young black men behaved themselves. Their elders probably told them what Tulsa’s redneck population did to the black community in 1921, and they decided against starting their own riot.

That goes to show one of the advantages of growing up in a town full of rednecks, many of whom had also served in the U.S. armed forces and had experience in combat.

Stop talking rot, and you'll be treated more politely. For now, you get what you earn.

==

It's actually 40 years since the home rule charter was adopted. Core city politicians are seldom impressive, Rudolph Giuliani being a notable exception. As for black core city mayors, they've tended toward two tacks: orderly management of decline (and could we have a little more federal swag) and actively destructive behavior. Carl Stokes and Kurt Schmoke were type A; Coleman Young and Marion Barry were type B. An important exception is Robert Bowser of East Orange, who had some real successes re quality of life concerns.

--

There are people all up and down the social scale in any subpopulation. The black population has a smaller salaried and small business portion. I have no clue why that social fact would lead a non-idiot to say blacks are not capable of " sustained, organized planning and attentive feedback loop".

-

And what's the point of 'answering' you? You regard the everyday business and professional element in the black population as unworthy of notice and you've already defined as inconsequential unusual achievers (because they're 'exceptions'). You've got your story and your sticking to it.

I think I just explained to you that I have been involved personally and professionally for many years with black people. So their behavior is hardly unworthy of notice to me. Far from it. My livelihood and at times my life depends on my noticing.

People of British descent in the U.S. tend to head for the frontiers. They seldom hunker down and defend urban turf.

Frontiers like Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Westchester? “British” Americans, like all other whites tend to move to the suburban frontiers outside major financial centers. Except, of course, for those descended from farmers.

"Re Dutch Shultz. Anyone speaking a germanic language or speaking with any sort of germanic accent might be termed “Dutch,” in pre-WWII America. It’s all a corruption of Deutsch. That’s why the German American Amish are called Pennsylvania Dutch. Yiddish is a sort of corrupted German, so his contemporaries of non-Jewish extraction would have called him dutch in a general, lazy sort of way."

Why was this addressed to me?

It wasn’t intentional. I must have mis-keyed. I have no idea who you are.

Gotti’s IQ was measured at 140 in prison. I think I’ve read somewhere that he tested 150 in high school (which his teachers didn’t want to believe)

There are some claims on the internet that Gotti had a high IQ, but also others that it was around 110, which seems more in keeping with the evidence.

This is from Forbes: “The only gangster whose IQ we have come across is John Gotti, who weighed in at 110 when tested at Franklin K. Lane High School in Brooklyn, an institution in which he did not linger overlong.”

Gotti’s IQ was measured at 140 in prison. I think I’ve read somewhere that he tested 150 in high school (which his teachers didn’t want to believe)

There are some claims on the internet that Gotti had a high IQ, but also others that it was around 110, which seems more in keeping with the evidence.

This is from Forbes: "The only gangster whose IQ we have come across is John Gotti, who weighed in at 110 when tested at Franklin K. Lane High School in Brooklyn, an institution in which he did not linger overlong."

“Of course the average African American male is not likely to kill anybody…During the 1980s and early 1990s, fewer than one out of every 2,000 black men would kill a person in any year, and most of their victims were other blacks. Though for young black men homicide is the leading cause of death, the chances of the average white person’s being killed by a black are very small….”

You hear this sort of thing frequently in SWPL-world. So what? Sure the average white person’s chances of being killed by a black are “very small”. Its still too high – a much greater chance than of being killed by a white. It is “very small” due in part due to the fact that the average white person doesn’t interact regularly with average blacks. Maybe their parents moved them to a white suburb, or they live in a place like NYC where the “average blacks” were stop-and-frisked and now reside in Riker’s Island. They might interact with some blacks, but they’re not “average” blacks.

People who push integration and scream “racism” at whites for not wanting to live around blacks are increasing the chances of white people being murdered by blacks. White people usually sense this, even if they can’t/won’t say it clearly.

The other point often missed by these types is that there is no upside to being around blacks. Even if I’m wrong about the downside (i.e. my chances of being murdered) it doesn’t matter because there is no upside. Blacks contribute absolutely nothing to modern America (unless you count ball-bouncing and shouting curse words into microphones as contributions). A bet that you can’t win, only tie or lose is a bad bet regardless of the chances of the loss versus the tie. There is literally not one thing I can think of that I’m missing out on by my active practice of Derb Rules and avoiding blacks as much as possible. I live in a white/Cuban suburb of Miami, send the kids to private schools, know where the blacks are concentrated and avoid those areas. When its necessary to venture into black areas, I do so during the day and carry a loaded handgun in a holster in my waistband (I have a concealed carry permit). Maybe I’m overreacting to the threat, but again, I’m not missing out on anything so it doesn’t make any difference.

A book I read on Gotti says in school the first time he was tested he was estimated to have an IQ of 140, which his teachers didn’t want to believe because he made everyone’s life a misery. He scored lower in later tests as an adult in prison. The lowest test was when he went away the last time. In a documentary on him I saw years back a cop asked about Gotti’s high IQ said he was a borderline moron.

Anyway, why would anyone in HBD be surprised that the most successful gang leader in New York had a high IQ; is it a lottery? Linda Gottfredson: “A close look at the task requirements of jobs and daily self-maintenance in modern life reveals which task attributes contribute most to complexity, and hence to the functional advantages of higher g, in many domains of life. As will be illustrated, the cognitive demands of even the most mundane daily tasks are sufficient to put less intelligent persons at a higher relative risk for many unfavorable life outcomes, including premature death.”

“When Gambino crimeboss John Gotti was alive years ago he spoke about the new ‘blood’ inducted into the family. During a walk-and talk session with other wiseguys at the Ravenite club he praised the business savvy of Richard Martino and Salvatore Locascio’ potential to use hi-tech schemes to earn millions for the family. Unaware the FBI recorded every word the Teflon Don said, “We need guys like Martino and Locascio who can “do more than killing”. “Ten years from now, these young guys we’ve straightened out, we’ll be proud of them”, Gotti boasted. No doubt the Gambinos were proud of wiseguys like Martino and Locascio who funneled millions into the family organize crime enterprise –charged in a multiple count indictment for operating the largest internet fraud, pornography and telephone scams in U.S. history. Authorities estimated the Gambinos earned over $400 million.” See also Cyber-Age Goodfellas, John Gotti’s Crew Makes a High-Tech Killing.

“In the 1970s, for instance, a distinct advantage that the Los Angeles economy had over the New York economy was the Mafia rakeoff was much smaller in LA.”

Certainly a distinct advantage if you were an illegal immigrant or a member of a nonwhite street gang, of course.

LA like Vegas was much safer and more prosperous when the mob ran it. The fall of Dragna, Cohen, etc. and weakening of the L.A. family left a void that someone was going to fill. LA had a weak mob and wound up getting more illegals, and no force to keep the Bloods, Crips, etc. in line.

"My feeling is that when it comes to 'fight or flight', white American men seem to divide very strongly by caste into fighters (eg Rednecks) and flighters (eg SWPLs). I have not seen this sort of divide nearly so marked in other Anglo or northern European countries, but it seems common in some third world nations such as India."

Rednecks practice White flight as well, which is why most big cities in the South tend to be predominantly Black like Baton Rouge, New Orleans (or as Blacks call it Nawlins), Memphis, Birmingham, Little Rock, Atlanta (or as Blacks call it the ATL), Jackson, Savannah, etc.

Rednecks dominate the suburbs and rural regions of the South.

>>Rednecks practice White flight as well, which is why most big cities in the South tend to be predominantly Black like Baton Rouge, New Orleans (or as Blacks call it Nawlins), Memphis, Birmingham, Little Rock, Atlanta (or as Blacks call it the ATL), Jackson, Savannah, etc.

Rednecks dominate the suburbs and rural regions of the South.<<

True to a degree, but my experience was that the South (not counting DC area as South) was a lot more racially integrated than the North. To the extent that my redneck brother in law & his friend once got in a bar fight with blacks… (He knocked a black guy's drink onto him, then said 'Calm down, you're not going to melt!' Apparently the Wizard of Oz reference went over the subject's head, and a fracas ensued, police were eventually called.)

““Of course the average African-American male is not going to kill anybody…the chances of the average white persons’ being killed by a black are very small..”

Of course a White person living a SWPL utopia like Portland, Oregon and San Francisco for example, have a very low chance of being murdered by a Black person.

But a White person who lives in cities dominated by Obama’s sons like Baton Rouge and Detroit, the chances of being murdered by a Black is much higher when you live in a city where Blacks outnumber Whites.

Unofficial racial segregation is the reason why most Whites in the U.S have a low chance of being murdered/victim of a violent crime by a Black person.. Most Whites in the U.S do not live in neighborhoods that have a heavy dose of Blacks.

But if you are a White person living in 84 percent Black Gary, Indiana, lets see how long your luck lasts.

And it’s just the sort of horseshit they’re so rightly called to carpet for. What are the odds of dying from a hurricane? Yet people still flee them, blacks and leftoids still whine over Katrina, etc. You don’t hear leftoids scoffing at the threat of hurricanes.

Then there’s the fact that, as Steve has pointed out before, violent crime impacts whole communities. A murder victim is hardly the only person impacted by the murder.

People who push integration and scream “racism” at whites for not wanting to live around blacks are increasing the chances of white people being murdered by blacks.

Indeed, leftism is inherently murderous.

The other point often missed by these types is that there is no upside to being around blacks.

Precisely.

There is literally not one thing I can think of that I’m missing out on by my active practice of Derb Rules and avoiding blacks as much as possible.

There is only one: it can bring you into conflict with (the murderous) leftoids; they will punish you if they find out.

There are about 500 species of sharks and only about 30 are considered man-eaters. That being said, i still wouldn’t swim in shark-infested waters.

It’s funny to watch the notoriously deliberate, risk-averse SWPLs do an about-face to “what, me worry!” when black crime is the topic. These people worry about what their kids’ kindergarten performance means for their life outcomes.

There is literally not one thing I can think of that I'm missing out on by my active practice of Derb Rules and avoiding blacks as much as possible.

I agree with this 100%. I live in Toronto. When i was young there were virtually no blacks here at all. Now the city is full of them, with a corresponding huge increase in crime. I can't think of one single gain or benefit I have received by my government admitting huge numbers of Jamaicans, Somalis, etc. I hear from the establishment over and over that "diversity is strength". Of course they never explain HOW this is actually so.

If SWPL do are not worried about Black crime, why do they make cities like Oakland and San Francisco so expensive to live that it drives out so many Blacks due to gentrification raising up the pricing in housing.

These people voted for Barack Hussein Obama, but the majority of them do not want to live in a city where people who look like Hussein Obama racially outnumber people who look like Mitt Romney.

And it's just the sort of horseshit they're so rightly called to carpet for. What are the odds of dying from a hurricane? Yet people still flee them, blacks and leftoids still whine over Katrina, etc. You don't hear leftoids scoffing at the threat of hurricanes.

Then there's the fact that, as Steve has pointed out before, violent crime impacts whole communities. A murder victim is hardly the only person impacted by the murder.

People who push integration and scream “racism” at whites for not wanting to live around blacks are increasing the chances of white people being murdered by blacks.

Indeed, leftism is inherently murderous.

The other point often missed by these types is that there is no upside to being around blacks.

Precisely.

There is literally not one thing I can think of that I’m missing out on by my active practice of Derb Rules and avoiding blacks as much as possible.

There is only one: it can bring you into conflict with (the murderous) leftoids; they will punish you if they find out.

There are about 500 species of sharks and only about 30 are considered man-eaters. That being said, i still wouldn’t swim in shark-infested waters.

It's funny to watch the notoriously deliberate, risk-averse SWPLs do an about-face to "what, me worry!" when black crime is the topic. These people worry about what their kids' kindergarten performance means for their life outcomes.

There is literally not one thing I can think of that I’m missing out on by my active practice of Derb Rules and avoiding blacks as much as possible.

I agree with this 100%. I live in Toronto. When i was young there were virtually no blacks here at all. Now the city is full of them, with a corresponding huge increase in crime. I can’t think of one single gain or benefit I have received by my government admitting huge numbers of Jamaicans, Somalis, etc. I hear from the establishment over and over that “diversity is strength”. Of course they never explain HOW this is actually so.

“I agree with this 100%. I live in Toronto. When i was young there were virtually no blacks here at all. Now the city is full of them, with a corresponding huge increase in crime. I can’t think of one single gain or benefit I have received by my government admitting huge numbers of Jamaicans, Somalis, etc. I hear from the establishment over and over that “diversity is strength”. Of course they never explain HOW this is actually so.”

They say one of the benefits of diversity is all of the foreign restaurants you get to choose from. But the foreign cuisine that I like originate from Nonblack countries like Thailand and Italy for example.

So I really see no upside in large scale Sub Saharan African, Haitian, and Jamaican immigration. Their food is not that good.